10 Takeaways from TEDxBroadway 2014.

What do you get when you take 20 thought leaders from various industries and add 400 Broadway Devotees who all want Broadway to be the best it can be?

You get awesome.

This Monday was our third annual TEDxBroadway and, as usual, it was an incredible day of imaginative ideas, positive theatrical spirit and two men in capes. (Ok, maybe the men in capes don’t happen every year, but, you get the drift.)

As with each previous TEDxBroadway, a theme generally emerges on its own from the day . . . and this year we had two: I heard the word “Magic” mentioned by no less than seven of our speakers, and at least that many of them interacted with the audience during their own talk.

Magic + Involvement = Modern Theater

See where that formula takes you.

For those of you who weren’t there, you’ll be able to see all these magical talks when we edit them down and upload them in a few weeks. Until then, as I did last year and the year before, I’ve included a bunch of my top ten sound bites from the amazing speakers that let us borrow their brains for the benefit of Broadway.

So here they are . . . (Oh, and if you want to read more, click here to see the search results for our #TEDxBway hashtag – there were so many tweets, we trended on Twitter!)

1. “Great theater inspires people to make their own art.” – Diane Paulus

2. “Crowdfunding is like taxes. People paying their own portion towards a common goal.” – David Drake

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Reiko Goodwin

You captured some fantastic bits here! This was my first TedXBroadway and I will definitely be returning next year.

My favorite takeaway of the night…
“I believe the goal of the business should be to improve the quality of life for everyone in its sphere.”
-Mark Fisher
This certainly goes for the business of Broadway!

For the modern reader, nevertheless, there’s a social reality that might
also happen to be buried since then, and it’s this angle that makes a revisit
to this magnum opus that launched Thomas Wolfe’s writing career all the more fascinating and rewarding.
During the 1 hour or so it takes me to commute to and from work,
I listen to an audio book. If you want to have more than one
book on your MP3 player then storage capacity is something to consider.